Beautiful Losers is the second and final novel by Canadian writer and musician Leonard Cohen.

Set in the Canadian province of Quebec, the story of 17th-century Mohawk saint Catherine Tekakwitha is interwoven with a love triangle between an unnamed anglophone Canadian folklorist; his Native wife, Edith, who has committed suicide; and his best friend, the mystical F, a Member of Parliament and a leader in the Quebec separatist movement.

The complex novel makes use of a vast range of literary techniques, and a wealth of allusion, imagery, and symbolism.

The book gained critical and commercial attention only after Cohen had given up novel-writing and turned to the songwriting and performing upon which his fame rests.

[4] At the centre of the novel are the members of a love triangle, united by their obsessions and fascination with a 17th-century Mohawk, Saint Catherine Tekakwitha.

"[citation needed] The narrator's wife hides in an elevator shaft, intending to have her husband kill her when he comes home.

[citation needed] The narrator and F. attend a demonstration in Montreal's "Parc Lafontaine", where I. gets so caught up in the nationalistic Québécois that he joins in himself, shouting, "Fuck the English!

[23] Cohen had published a number of books of poetry since the 1956 appearance of Let Us Compare Mythologies, and one novel, The Favourite Game (1963).

[25] He had been living on the Greek island of Hydra in the early to mid-1960s, and had composed The Favourite Game and a book of poetry, Flowers for Hitler, there.

[26] Cohen wanted to write a "liturgy, a big confessional oration, very crazy, but using all the techniques of the modern novel ... pornographic suspense, humor and conventional plotting".

When the novel began to take shape, he worked up to fifteen hours a day, with the help of amphetamines.

[28] The first period of writing was interrupted when Cohen returned to Canada in October 1964 to receive the Prix littéraire du Québec for The Favourite Game, followed by a reading tour.

[29] Cohen practised fasting during the composition of the novel, believing that it helped focus his creativity and spirituality.

[30] Cohen responded to the book's acceptance with a parodic six-page letter anticipating the response of offended Canadian critics.

Before publication, a number of film producers were eyeing the book, such as Otto Preminger, Ulu Grosbard, Alexander Cohen and the MCA Group.

A gala lunch was thrown a month in advance of the book's release, and about four hundred of the top names in the Canadian arts world appeared there.

Posters had Cohen in a turtleneck and jacket in the hopes that such a sober pose would offset the anticipated scandal.

Cohen thought it too high, but McClelland explained it was necessary to offset the publication costs and extensive promotion.

[25] Critic Robert Fulford called Beautiful Losers "the most revolting book ever written in Canada",[46] while also stating it was "an important failure.

Instead, they objected to the novel's complexity of allusion and representation, and the demands it put on the reader due to its incoherence and indeterminacy.

[49] In 1967, Desmond Pacey called Beautiful Losers "the most intricate, erudite and fascinating Canadian novel ever written".

In his 1970 monograph on Cohen, Michael Ondaatje called it "the most vivid, fascinating and brave modern novel" he had read.

Beautiful Losers was the inspiration for the song "Let's Be Other People" by the English band The Wonderstuff on their album Hup.